Dolt, you knew you would have to give her up when you started this.
Yes, but twenty-four years ago, he had barely known her. She was just a handful of newborn, a set of healthy lungs, a pair of bright blue eyes, and a way to tweak her parents’ upturned noses. How was he to know she would turn into the most delightful—he hardly dared think the word “daughter,” not with its suggestion of bastardy—but the most wonderful ward any man could want? In the face of a world that hated everything about her, she remained curious and compassionate.
As her warden, encouraging her to take the next step was part of the job. She had to leave him behind, like a newborn chick leaving its cracked and empty shell.
Isabelle shrieked. Jean-Claude’s eyes flew open. But it was a squeal of delight, not fear. Isabelle leaned over the ship’s rail, pointing with her proxy hand and laughing. “Look, leviathans!”
Vincent, by her side, wore a bored, supercilious smile, as if he were indulging a child. “Indeed they are, Princess.”
Jean-Claude’s hand clenched so tightly on the stanchion that his glove picked up splinters. What was that fool doing, letting her get so close to the edge? What if she tipped over? She was tethered, but the rail could give way or the line could break.
“Isabelle,” he croaked, but she was too involved with her adventure to heed him. She had taken to the skyship as if she was born to it, and would have been scrambling up the rigging if protocol and petticoats had permitted.
“Isabelle!” Jean-Claude forced himself to let go of the upright and stagger to her side, clipping his own tether to the rope—like the rail, far too flimsy a precaution.
The ship rocked. Jean-Claude pitched forward, and only his mad bulldog grip on the rail prevented him tipping headfirst off the ship.
Isabelle gesticulated emphatically at the leviathans, enormous, glittering, aether-filled bodies, easily as long as the Santa Anna and her escort ships. They undulated slowly through the sky, propelled by translucent membranous fins that ran the length of their bodies. Their mouths, which opened like parasols on four long, slender jawbones, were filled not with teeth but with something that looked like pink feather down. Even as Jean-Claude recovered his balance, the great beasts turned their tails up and dove slowly into the Miasma.
“Jean-Claude, did you see them?” Isabelle asked. “It looked like they were feeding, but what is there in the Miasma to eat? Perhaps they consume the vapors, but why doesn’t it make them sick?”
Down past the inverted forest of turvy masts sprouting from the bottom of the ship, past the leviathans, waited the nether skies: the Miasma, the Galvanosphere, and the Gloom. Isabelle had told him that empirical philosophers had calculated the depth to the heart of the world as more than ten thousand kilometers. Jean-Claude had not asked how long it would take to fall that far. The immense dark depth enticed him, shrinking his world around the edges.
He yanked his gaze from the seductive abyss and fixed it on Isabelle. His voice was a rasp. “Come away from the edge, please. It isn’t safe.” Builder knew he’d spent most of his life keeping her safe from assassins, kidnappers, and lesser enemies. It would be inexcusable to lose her en route to her wedding.
“Don’t be so fussy,” she said. “I’m perfectly safe. I’m double tethered. Even if the ship capsizes, I’ll just hang here, like a spider from a thread, until somebody pulls me up.”
Jean-Claude eyed the ship warily and muttered, “Don’t give it any ideas.” His toes clenched in his boots, trying to grab the deck and take root in case the ship suddenly flipped.
Vincent laid a well-manicured hand on Jean-Claude’s shoulder. “Monsieur musketeer does not look well. Mademoiselle, if you will permit me to escort your guest below?”
“I do not need your help.” Jean-Claude tried to shake the younger man off, but it was hard to do with almost every muscle in his body locked.
Isabelle’s brows beetled in worry. “You do look a bit green. Why don’t you go inside and have a cup of tea?”
Jean-Claude suffered himself to be towed away. Like a doddering old man. It was either that or cause a public scene. Vincent directed him belowdecks, into the undercastle, a gun deck beneath the hold, currently unoccupied. No doubt he thought it would be the perfect place for a private manly chat. At least belowdecks, the sky didn’t insist on rocking around so much, but, damn it, Jean-Claude couldn’t watch Isabelle from here, not that there was much to guard her from on a skyship.
Of course, that isolation came with problems of its own. All the gossip he’d gathered about Aragoth was months old, and he had no way of freshening his store until he arrived in San Augustus. It would take precious time to make enough contacts to get a worthwhile finger on the pulse of Isabelle’s new city. If the sampling he’d gotten from the Santa Anna’s crew was any indication, it would be rough going. The sailors made signs against evil behind her back, and muttered about witchcraft and abominations. “To each his own kingdom,” as the teaching went; ten kingdoms for ten sorceries, seven now that two bloodlines were extinct and a third banished.
“Monsieur, a word,” Vincent said.
Jean-Claude looked up into Vincent’s cold gray eyes. “Just one? Certainly.” Jean-Claude didn’t like the man; he was too much le Comte des Zephyrs’s creature. Isabelle had, in her father’s eyes, suddenly gone from being an embarrassing liability to a very valuable asset, so he’d bought the best sell-sword he could obtain, a man loyal only to coin.
Vincent fixed a disproving look on Jean-Claude. “In a word then, desist. In slightly more words, I bid you to recall that you are Princess Isabelle’s guest, not her guardian. Now that the need of serious guarding has arisen, His Excellency le Comte des Zephyrs has selected a serious guard. Your continued assistance will not be required … or tolerated.”
Jean-Claude sagged theatrically. “Too true. In all these years, never has my mettle been truly tested in Her Highness’s service. Alas, my orders come from le roi.” He reached under his tunic for the pouch containing his carefully preserved orders—they hadn’t been renewed in twenty-four years—but Vincent flung up a warding hand.